Comments
Rangermatthias t1_j2ckhyc wrote
To remember the colors, think of it as a person's name, ROY G. BIV: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.
frustrated_staff t1_j2ce1qp wrote
Yes, always. Because the frequency of the light is what determines what color it is, and it's the light that's getting separated into its component wavelengths. Each wavelengths "bends" a little more than the one before it (gets diffracted)
BurnOutBrighter6 t1_j2ckcte wrote
Yes the order is always the same.
A light's colour is determined by its wavelength. "White" light, like sunlight, is a combination of all the different colours.
Rainbows happen when the suspended drops of water in the air act like prisms and refract the light. When light goes through a prism, it gets bent by an amount that depends on its wavelength. The longer the wavelength the less it is bent, the shorter the wavelength the more it is bent. That means the light gets "fanned out" according to colour. Red has the longest wavelength and gets bent the least, orange gets bent a little more, etc etc.
Gullible-Flounder-79 t1_j2d8xpw wrote
Sort of, the Rainbow is actually a series of concentrical circles. The reason it's a bow is that the horizon usually cuts off the other half and the additional bows are fainter and thus less likely to be seen. The order of the colors reverse for the secondary rainbows.
czbz t1_j2dhc8r wrote
Yes, and for a rainbow in sunlight the centre of the circle is always exactly opposite the sun, and normally the rain that generates the rainbow is some distance away. It's unusually to be able to look into the distance downwards.
pretendperson1776 t1_j2cvmpi wrote
Violet has the shortest wavelength, so the greatest chance to interact with a more dense medium. This slows it more than blue, which is more than green... you get the idea.
Hitting straight on you wouldn't notice, but at an angle, it causes the light to bend (think of driving a car, then slowing the left wheels more than the right, the car will turn).
Because the Violet portion bends the most, it ends up on one end, and the red (which bends the least) ends up on the other.
jaa101 t1_j2cmclf wrote
The brightest rainbow always has the same colour order, with red on the outside, but in ideal conditions a secondary rainbow can become visible outside the primary. The colour order of the secondary rainbow has the red on the inside, the opposite to that of the primary.
The reason for the difference is that the secondary rainbow involves the light being bent through more than 180°, i.e., it's bent back on itself.
Buttleston t1_j2ce39v wrote
Yes, the order is always the same. The refraction that happens in a rainbow isn't actually "splitting the light into colors," it's actually just taking white light (which is a combination of all the visible wavelengths of light) and spreading them out like an accordian. So, the colors you see will be ordered by the wavelengths of light.
Low frequency light wavelengths that we can see start at red and as the frequency increases you get up into orange, yellow, green, blue, etc.